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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26264317">Brutus</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Secondchild/pseuds/Secondchild'>Secondchild</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Infinity Train (Cartoon)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AU, F/M, Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:42:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,233</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26264317</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Secondchild/pseuds/Secondchild</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Inherently there’s light in even the darkest of souls those far gone are still salvageable in some ways. The train recycles everything even those who are little more then trash. Simon despite his blaring faults is given not a second chance but Instead a second life as someone permanently bound to the train to help passengers in a way he couldn’t be helped. He’s reborn as a null.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Simon Laurent &amp; Grace Monroe, Simon Laurent/Grace Monroe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>58</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Prefacing this by saying this is the first fanfic I’ve written in years. Comments and kudos are very appreciated! There will be more chapters</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Why would he ever want to change? Why? He was always right, always. Yet he stares down the throat of his doom, a howl of his own anguish lacing the ferocity of the beasts as he begs for what even he doesn’t want anymore. He feared the ghoms, feared for his life and still fought in vain regardless of everything. His life had once been worth fighting battles for, fighting wars for yet all he wanted now was for it to be over. There was nothing to win anymore, the bastions had already fallen burned to smoldering embers and the banners of a once noble kingdom had been spat on. The rightful kings crown had clattered onto the ground and he would die as he lived always alone without his people - without his Queen. </p><p>How dearly had he wanted to defer to curse the world for not giving him what he deserved. but it did. It handed him what he deserved on a silver plate leaving him no choice but to wolf it down no matter how disgusting it was.</p><p>He does not cry out in fear as he feels sinew and muscle being burnt away, barely fighting as ashes float around his breaking body. He cries for what could’ve been, for what he never deserved remembering hopes and dreams once harbored before they were crumpled like smudged notebook paper torn from the binding of weathered “novel”. It was all by his doing.</p><p> It was her fault he wants to scream and oh how he reminded himself of that day and night while she was gone. Reminded himself that he didn’t need her (but he did! He did! Fuck he did!) that his numbers meant he was worth more. That his numbers would guarantee he’d never be hurt again. That no one would lie to him, no one would leave him, that he’d never hurt again. </p><p>He was wrong. So wrong. And so so alone despite the eyes and the crumbling feeling within him and the beast that feast voraciously upon his soul, sucking out numbers that weren’t worth keeping around. Like him.</p><p>He’d never liked being alone. Hated spending those night wrapped in his sheets sobbing at a loss he childishly wish he could’ve prevented, a loss that led him to gaining more then he could control out in a world that wasn’t his own. A world he and Grace tried to stake a claim on. A world he didn’t need to worry about losing another, about being left behind, yet that was a constant even here. Where there were no wars waged to steal away fathers save for the ones they waged with bright smiles and loud jests and challenges.</p><p> Yet in his last moments he doesn’t think of the raids he recalls more tender memories - memories of two children not quite turned rigid by the environment with no blood on their hands and numbers that only went as far as three digits. He remembers things when they were at their best before plans of conquest had popped into their mind. Back when they were just two children learning what friendship was, learning to trust again and most importantly to trust each other. They’d been inseparable and always had each other’s backs yet right now all that was against his own is cold unfeeling metal.</p><p>It’s the opposite of her warmth of the feeling she once shared with him, he still recalls his feelings yet how soured they are now painted over and brandished with his own unforgiving pain. Yet when he looked into her face he saw everything he’d ever wanted and believed in, he saw something more than a friend or partner in crime and he’d never had the chance to do much about it and whatever plans he had - gifts he’d carved and wimped out of giving, small favors he’d done that went unthanked as they became routine instead of occasional gifts and of course a confession that had never came to light. Instead he’d lost everything they were in the haze of his “rightful” rage, instead of holding onto childish aspirations of love and hope he’d tried to claim a destiny that was never his and attempted to usurp and destroy the one person in this world he’d have forever happily served.</p><p>He had thought her dead. Killed beneath the wheels of the train like the null who started this hell. What ran through his head in those moments had been akin to the lightning above, violent and volatile; too quick and dangerous to get too close to. Too painful to touch. Yet to see her come up had filled him with another feeling entirely that he hadn’t gotten the chance to put his finger on. Hatred? Envy? Regret?</p><p>It didn’t matter now. They’d be separated anyways and he knew coming out here that nothing would ever be the same, that only one would walk back into the mall car glorious and horribly changed. He thought it’d be him. He’s happy it isn’t.</p><p>Sickly in his final moments he wonders if she’d miss him. If she’d remember what they were before all of this? Remember the little boy in black socks and sandals that she shared her life with, that she had saved time and time again only to be denied that final chance to save him again? </p><p>He didn’t deserve it. Neither did she and if it weren’t for his recessing skin and bones it could be seen that in his last seconds of life his impossibly high number had gone down. But he was gone now wasn’t he? Reduced to nothing but a melancholic memory.</p><p>So it seemed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Equations</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The spark of life was something that couldn’t be snuffed out with ease, the electric currents of life and death were tightly interwoven like the fabric of reality and yet here those woven strands were twisted and turned knotted so raggedly along each specific weft. The train should not exist, it was a thing a being that shouldn’t be - but it was. It continued to pull across the track unstopped by the rules of the world. Stuck in a loop that always extended out into the unknown from wherever it started. It’s passengers were tied to it born out of nothing like the train cars that inhabited them.</p>
<p>Yet some denizens didn’t fit the molds of predetermined locales; they weren’t carved like perfect soldiers. Instead of being made they were born. That spark of life torn to pieces would be recovered and stitched together as easily as patchwork. The train didn’t see a boy who’d lost his way, didn’t see anything but scrambled numbers and a sudden absence of hole that needed filling. </p>
<p>The train helped people yes but some weren’t meant to be helped, the solutions to their problems unable to equalize into whole numbers. They just went on and on but perhaps those ruined equations were better suited to being a part of a different set. One meant to help to solve another’s problem rather than solve themselves. It was a fate that awaited few but one that awaited the dust on the train tracks. </p>
<p>The only fate that awaited it was to be reborn anew as part of the gears that made the train run smoothly rather than the axel who’d broken and shattered and slowed down the process of the entire shindig. There was no heaven or hell here. There was no escape for those who didn’t shake hands with their demons <i>they’d</i> pessimistically think.</p>
<p><b>“Whoops”</b> a robotic remark would be heard in the darkness of the conductors car where screens were aplenty and pristine circuitry ran amuck. It’d changed much since the switching of hands, since the days Ms. Amelia ran the show before they and Ms. Tulip got things back in line and they was returned to their mother to get things back into place but right now it seemed so little was. From ejecting train cars and so many many anomalies (they miss their assistant though her complaints of turtles - always turtles grew even intolerable for the most patient beings on the train) <i>Wonder if this passenger was bitten by one. That’d be quite a interesting thing to add to their record - to their obituaries which they kept of course.</i> Sad One however had so rarely written more than a word in them. </p>
<p>Ironically people didn’t die normally on the train despite the obsession with death held by one side of the conductor. For that reason it wasn’t automated like much else on the train. There was a process to everything it seemed except for this. <i>how fascinating!</i> <b>how annoying.</b> They think for a moment of what they have to do, of what could be done and all as they pull up screens flipping through names and faces of passengers before they locate exactly what they were looking for without expecting it. If their digital eyes could widen anymore they would. Both sets, which was a shocker! Really! </p>
<p>The screen looked glitched numbers cutting through a passengers face from the portrait above - there was no name above the first set of numbers and that’s how it always would be how the train and its conductor would see them. See all except for perhaps one despite everything they’d seen and done and the friends they’d made! But this number was unprecedented, completely ruining the setup of the monitor - the train had programmed a safe method of display but yet this number seemed to have broken just as the boy it belonged to lay broken where he “lay” on the train. <i>”Bollocks!”</i> they repeated a word they’d heard before, it fit the situation just fine in their eyes. <i>”This just won’t do hmmmm… what should we do?”</i> no one answers of course and how silly of them to expect anything else. It makes them laugh actually, really they knew better haha!</p>
<p><b>”Ughhh this is so much work”</b> they hadn’t even gotten started. Save for pulling up the portrait and all which slowly was starting to bug out the monitor as the numbers continued to cascade to trickle higher and higher - then they take a nosedive then raise again as if they were fighting for dominance. They knew many of the passengers were fighting their feelings and traumas upon the grand therapy train but this was an enigma. This boy had already lost his battle but Hmm maybe he hadn’t lost the war quite yet. He’d have time to do that they figure after they get all their ducks in a row of course.</p>
<p>They figure something temporary will do - something to give some credence to the broken soul out on the railways. They never liked using the thing however it just bothered them in a way that they couldn’t describe but there was one thing here that surely wouldn’t be bothered by it in the slightest. <i>”Steward! I need some help!”</i> glad one calls meeting their words with a signature tune, or well the humming of one they always preferred the sound of their own voice compared to the normal doo doo doo they could make from… well they don’t know what part of them makes those sounds. </p>
<p>The slinking sound of metal would precede the hulking beast of machinery matched with a porcelain face that was the steward. <i>”Good you’re here!”</i> it doesn’t say anything, never did unless it had to talk to passengers or if they were riding in it. It was like a well behaved puppy really didn’t make much noise and did it’s commands… well it was more like a puppy then Attitcus who was a dog and a king not some pup! </p>
<p>Ah they were getting distracted again! <i>”We need you to grab the gun thingy!</i><b>”And shoot a dead guy for us.”</b> with a point of a stubby mechanical limb up at the screen the steward would understand just what orders it was receiving. It’s still eyeless haze resting on the distorted face of the number cluster and with a beep of confirmation. It’d whip away leaving One-One alone to return to their business of resting while the train continued on its never ending path.</p>
<p><i>”Come back safe!”</i> Glad one would call <b>”Or don’t not like we have a say in the matter”</b></p>
<p>Perhaps they didn’t but most certainly the boy didn’t have one either and with the pull of a trigger his momentarily and temporary lulling into the dark abyss of the afterlife would be torn away from him.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>New chapters will be up nightly ;0 !</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Kingdom Car</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Simon wakes up and realizes the predicament he’s in</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>All he could taste was static and iron, he feels so much and so little at the same time. The world around him blurs, it’s all colors and anomalous structures of dappled void as his eyes flicker open. He opens his mouth to scream as his limbs languidly push against nothing. He was hurting. He was gone. He <i>was</i> gone. He coughs a wordless exclamation, words failing as his body had. Yet he manages one thing and it makes his body thrum with fresh pain <b>”Grace!””</b> it’s instinctual - practically the vocal equivalent to muscle memory, it was something he couldn’t change. Something like him. Yet he had, Simon had changed just not in any way that mattered not in any way he cared for. <i>he died denying that care, denying change. That didn’t matter however, he hadn’t been wrong. He was right, wasn’t he?</i></p><p>Why was he here though? Why was he alive? The Ghom where had it gone? Where was Grace? Where was he? Groggily he peers around with bloodshot eyes as the blaring light of an unknown sanctuary bleeds into sight. He remembers blood red skies and lightning, remembers the taste of his own <i>blood</i> and the dust from the sands below the treading wheels of the death machine. It’s bright here, a tapestry of blue spruced up with puffy clouds that mock him with their brightness, that practically smile and laugh at him for being a fool. He’d almost died but this is no heaven or anything of the sort, he feels breath in his lungs, feels wind on his body raking gently against his haggard body. He fears he’ll be blown away and he wonders where that thought came from. How could he just blow away? </p><p>Finally he shifts up eyes flicking from the sky to the surroundings around him and it’s akin to a scene from Esmoroth but terribly <i>wrong</i> as if the pages had been torn and disfigured with black ink. In front of him stood the remnants of a castle cut up with bricks laying around the grass dusted over and forgotten. A fate worse than death had happened to this place. He doesn’t yet realize his own affliction - his own fate. <b>”...Where am I?”</b> wearily he takes a step forward almost to keel over at the ‘weightlessness’ of his body. He knows no one will answer, yet he has childish hope still retains that childish yearning to spend his life surrounded - never forgotten or abandoned. Never like this fallen kingdom.</p><p><i>This is a train car Simon, get it together</i> incessantly he reminds himself in his head trying to practice drills he’d only learned about in books, stay focused stay vigilant. Keep your eyes on the mission. And what was his mission now? Grace was? He didn’t even know that and what of the Apex, where were they? Had they carried him here by mistake? Did they think he was dead? <i>he thought he was too.</i>  He needs to find them, needs to set things straight like he had been trying to do. Needs to find them like he and Grace tried to do (like they always did) before they met those <i>Nulls</i>.</p><p>He shifts, reaching down and trying to find his tracker and it’s only then he notices there’s something severely wrong, his eyes have focused no longer blurry from pain and sleep. His body ached but not with the horrible pain it had when he was laying beneath that monster. It was a different sort of ache and he understands now when he looks down and sees a paw instead of a hand. When he sees perfectly rounded paw pads and elongated claws matched with perfectly white fur. </p><p>It’s impossible not to think of her. To not remember a voice that was as kind as it was treacherous, not to remember the way fur tickled against his nose as his head laid on warm plush fur or how that tail disappeared into the shadows to never be seen until he was older. He yowls out a scream tumbling over and falling harshly over himself, his shoulder hitting the ground with a thud as claws latch themselves into anything close - into grass and into his fur and skin digging fissures that gush anew and angry with blood. <b>”NO!”</b> this can’t be happening this was just some dream. He’d wake up and everything would be back to normal, there was no other explanation. This couldn’t be his reality. He was a passenger - a leader! This wasn’t who he was, he wasn’t a null his numbers had soared he surpassed them all with flying colors was worthy of respect was worthy of love of being listened to and forever obeyed. He deserved the train deserved his rightful place but instead his reward had been this.</p><p>If he knew this was what it meant to win he would’ve lost at the start and taken the easy road out like <i>she</i> was trying to do. </p><p>He wheezes, gritting sharp teeth together in an effort not to cry but it leaks out anyway - why did they come out what gave them the right? This wasn’t fair. He chokes out a sob letting himself finally scream and sob against the grass as the false sun beat on his fur those clouds still passing by so peacefully so mocking of his plight. They go further and further across the sky as time passes and as tears turn dry. He doesn’t know how long he sat there doesn’t know if it mattered. Perhaps it’d been only seconds or even hours, it didn’t matter to the train it measured it differently - as it did all things just as he measured what it granted him as his own worth.</p><p>He forces himself up lifting up one paw and glaring into it, the fur around each digit had pinkened and he refuses to look where his (its…) claws had latched in. <b>this is a mistake</b> he needed to be logically needed to not fall into despair so easily. <b>”This <i>has</i> to be a mistake”</b> there were always plans to be made always a way to lose the battle but win the war in the end - he’d stressed that point so many times in his books. Always made sure to stress that one loss wasn’t the end of things, it’d only inspire the kingdom to fight even harder. </p><p>He’d find the apex, set things in place then storm to that false conductor and force him to return him back to his body. It’s a simple plan in his head but oh how complicated it’d be. With that in mind he’d look out into the broken kingdom with a heated gaze. He’d need to find the exit first however, he’d need to work one step at a time…</p><p>The first hurdle to jump was figuring out how to live without thumbs.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I want these chapters to be short and easy to digest well in the beginning! The next few chapters will get further into things ;0</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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